“One of the things that the judge has
done is he's made a very, very strong opinion that's very difficult
to overturn on appeal,” lead attorney David Boies said Wednesday
night during an appearance on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show.

California voters approved the measure
by a narrow margin on November 4, 2008. The law put an end to gay
and lesbian weddings taking place in the state after the California
Supreme Court legalized the institution.

“A Court of Appeal must give great
deference to the factual findings of the trial court, especially when
those findings are based on the credibility of witness testimony.”

“We should be grateful to Judge
Walker for carefully and diligently going through the facts of the
case, creating a detailed and compelling record for the Court of
Appeal and the Supreme Court,” he added.

Douglas NeJaime, associate professor of
law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, went further.

In an email to On Top Magazine,
NeJaime said Walker concluded, based on the facts, that “Proposition
8 could not withstand the lowest level of constitutional scrutiny
since ... it is based on the idea that same-sex couples (and their
relationships) are inferior to different-sex couples (and their
relationships).”

“Judge Walker issued several findings
of fact, based on extensive expert testimony, to support these legal
conclusions,” he added. “Indeed, in a statement that will likely
resonate for years to come, Judge Walker concluded that '[t]he
evidence shows that, by every available metric, opposite-sex couples
are not better than their same-sex counterparts; instead, as
partners, parents and citizens, opposite-sex couples and same-sex
couples are equal.'”

Walker heard 13 days of testimony
during a January trial held in a San Francisco courtroom. Closing
arguments were presented in June. He's stayed his ruling at least
until Friday, when he'll hold another hearing to determine if gay
marriages can resume as the case is being appealed.

Andy Pugno, lead counsel for Protect
Marriage, the group that sponsored Proposition 8, called the decision
“a disappointment.”

“The judge's invalidation of the
votes of over seven million Californians violates binding legal
precedent and short-circuits the democratic process,” he said.
“But this is not the end of our fight to uphold the will of the
people for traditional marriage, as we now begin an appeal to the
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.”